Sun Belt population surge to continue for years to come

WASHINGTON — People will continue to flock to Texas and Florida in the coming years, while Rust Belt states Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania will barely grow.

The nation’s population growth will far outpace the increase predicted in Europe.

The U.S. population is expected to have grown almost 17 percent from 2010 to 2030, more than four times what is predicted for the European Union (EU) in the same period.

Those are some of the predictions demographers are offering as a new year arrives and the United States prepares for political change.

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the forecast marks an end to an era of slow growth that characterized the post-recession United States. The slowdown, he said, “has now dissipated with greater migration to newly emerging jobs in the South and the West.”

Along with Texas and Florida, Frey said the populations of Washington state, North Carolina and Arizona are also rising significantly.

Figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the country’s population will stand at 324.31 million today, the first day of 2017. That’s 2.25 million more than a year ago.

That increase is part of a long-term rise in which demographers say the United States will reach 360.83 million people by 2030, up 16.87 percent from 2010.

The 28-nation EU, in contrast, is projected to grow by 4.09 percent over the same period, according to Eurostat, the EU’s demographics agency.

The figure includes the population of Great Britain, whose residents voted in June to leave the EU, but where Parliament still must pass legislation for that to happen.

The Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service released projections in May for coming population changes in the U.S. and its 50 states.

That data show Florida with 25 million residents by 2030, which would be an increase of 33 percent over its 2010 population of 18.8 million.

Texas’ population will be 35.18 million by 2030, almost 40 percent above 2010, the data show.

Qian Cai, director of the Demographics Research Group, said that in addition to more people moving to Florida, Texas and other expanding states, the states benefit from lower death rates and higher birthrates because of the influx of young people.

“States that have younger populations tend to grow more,” she said.

California, the nation’s most populous state, is projected to grow 20.64 percent between 2010 and 2030, ahead of the national rate.

Texas and Florida will widen their leads over New York as the No. 2 and No. 3 states, demographers predict.

New York’s population is expected to have increased 8.36 percent from 2010 to 2030, scarcely half the national rise.

As recently as 2010, New York had more people than Florida. From 2015 to 2016, its population decreased slightly for the first time in a decade.

In the Mountain West, another growing region, the population of Idaho is projected to increase 25 percent.